Dr. Marc Gaswirth, a retired public school administrator, has written extensively for nearly 50 years about public sector bargaining  and school human resources.  

One of the most eluded areas of interest, research and discussion has been the inexorable loss of instructional time available to public school students during the annual 180-day school year. It touches not only on a massive indifference to the matter but also a complete disregard for the actions and policy decisions made at both at New Jersey’s political and policy-making level, as well as the local labor negotiations table.

So I applaud the thesis raised in a recent article in New Jersey Education Report. The author makes a strong argument that much attention should be paid to school employee absenteeism as will now be focused when a new Task Force soon takes on the compelling topic of chronic student absenteeism. Mr. Scott’s thesis deserves immediate attention— but for other reasons rarely explored. 

These focus on the highly generous paid leave allowances granted to school employees writ large and the legal limits placed on school districts to monitor actual usage and potential abuse.

The fact is that the political and education establishment has been deeply remiss to not focus on school employee absenteeism due to a lack of political courage and conviction, which constitutes nothing less than a dereliction of professional duty.

The legal requirement that schools are in session for a minimum of 180 days of instruction is, effectively, the maximum instruction that students with perfect attendance get, and that assumes that there are no other interruptions.

Sadly, there are plenty.

First, the few teacher workdays provided in excess of the180-day requirement are usually earmarked for employee in-service and days of inclement weather. As often happens when the winter weather is mild, the days set aside for bad weather are subtracted from the work year, leaving the 180-day minimum as the default standard length of the instructional time students receive. 

Subtract further from this number the more than half dozen abbreviated days considered legal full-days (at least a minimum of four hours of often questionable instruction): days of inclement weather, those before or after holidays or recess periods, days at the beginning or the end of school year, or staff in-service days. When combined, they further shrink the length of the instructional year.

“Affordability” has become the clarion call in certain current political circles. Let me suggest one that should equally resound in today’s education circles: “Instructional Availability.”

This is one of the most unexamined yet potentially explosive issues currently facing education leaders and policy makers: the amount of time teachers are away from their normal instructional duties during a typical school year. This is a scandalous situation that, left unheeded and ignored, adversely affects hundreds of thousands of students annually.

Until approximately 2020, the New Jersey Department of Education reported each school district’s annual teacher attendance rate to the public, but it turned out to be grossly misleading as the attendance percentage cited was typically well over 90%.

The problem with the data was that it glossed over the true rate of teacher absences and instead focused only on certain short-term ones, specifically daily and sporadic absences for sick and personal days. All other days, including long-term sick-leave absences and days for professional and bereavement leave, were conveniently left out of the calculation. It was a model that was so misleading as to be useless, understating a significant problem.

For some reason, after the DOE dropped reporting of this important statistic, it never replaced it with an improved objective and accurate model. This inaction represents a gross neglect of a critical variable with a profound impact on student learning and achievement.

An operating premise is that valued instruction takes place when the regular teacher is present on a continuous basis to provide it. Having a substitute fill vacant positions either on a short or long term basis is rarely an adequate stand-in for a regularly assigned teacher. 

Nearly every district is unable to have sufficient daily or long-term qualified substitutes to fill in areas of designated teacher shortages. Ask any school superintendent or personnel director how many qualified candidates would be immediately available to fill the absence of a science, math, bi-lingual, or special education teacher who is absent for several days or longer. An honest response would be few substitutes certificated in these areas, if any, are available on short notice.  

Former Governor Murphy and the Legislature did school districts no favor when in 2023 they enacted a law that greatly expanded the definition of a sick day, allowing school employees to use their current and accumulated sick days, in some cases in the hundreds, for an array of  reasons, including those related to employees’ immediate families’ personal needs. Importantly, this broad legal right provides paid leave benefits in excess of those already available in locally negotiated labor contracts.

The law further restricted a school district’s right to seek documentation of sick leave use until an employee has been absent for three consecutive days.

There is no data available to examine the law’s impact, but it is fair to say that it has placed considerable stress on school budgets that have seen an increase in substitute costs, resulted in overall higher teacher absenteeism, and likely further reduced the amount of essential student–regular teacher contact time. 

The data can be accumulated and analyzed but, as mentioned earlier, a model first has to be developed to accurately measure the true amount of the time teachers are away from their normal duties, including major interruptions during the school year when long-term leaves of absences remove teachers  from their duties for weeks or large portions of the school year. 

Staff absences are a long overdue problem that the newly-installed Sherrill Administration must closely examine and seriously respond to.

If addressing this problem interferes with negotiations outcomes that might otherwise lead to a further reduction in student-teacher contact time, so be it.  

If it encourages a more expansive view of the length and structure of a school calendar currently replete with legal holidays and days off for teachers’ convention two months into the school to ensure greater learning continuity, so be it.

 If it forces the new legislature and governor to review the current statutory framework that directly affects lost learning time resulting in fewer abbreviated days, so be it.

We either affirmatively act to respect or honor the importance of time spent in school with students experiencing quality instruction, or we simply continue on a course which makes learning or what we define it to be, increasingly irrelevant.